


Making Amends

by Setcheti



Series: Tremors: the Subtext [7]
Category: Tremors: The Series
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosalita has some apologies to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Amends

Twitchell pulled up to the ranch house and got out of his car with a look that meant business on his face.  “Miss Sanchez!” he called out.  “I know you’re home!”

The screen door opened just short of violently and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes when the woman he’d come looking for stalked out wearing yet another outfit that looked like a Vegas hooker’s rendition of Daisy Duke.  She scowled at him.  “What do you want, Twitchell?  I did all my paperwork and sent it in…”

“I’m not here about paperwork,” he cut her off.  He did a little stalking of his own, right up to the porch but didn’t step up onto it.  “You had Harlow leave word at Chang’s that Gummer and Reed no longer have the right to ‘trespass’ on your property when they’re on patrol.  Now since those patrols are what keeps this valley – not to mention your little attempt at ranching here – halfway safe, I want to know what your problem is and I want to know _right now_.”

Rosalita folded her arms across her chest.  “It’s my property, I don’t have to let anyone on here I don’t want.”

Twitchell snorted.  “My kid pouts better than that, keep practicing.  And you don’t have any say when it comes to those patrols, little lady, because Gummer is the only reason you’re still out here.”  He took a deep breath; time to dive in.  “I told him and I’ll tell you, I don’t give a god damn who he sleeps with as long as it’s not the worm.  I don’t care what sort of problems you’ve got personally with homosexuals, but if it’s gonna interfere with keeping track of whatever crawls out of the woodwork around here I’ll start to care in a hurry, understand me?”

She puffed up for a minute, and then deflated when he used the look on her he used on his kid at home.  “What if I don’t want Tyler to come with him?”

“No deal.”  Twitchell knew better than to give ground – give her a loophole and he was opening up the door for a whole lot of problems down the road.  “They’re partners and they make a damned good team, I’m not gonna mess around with that because you were carrying a torch for a gay guy and now you’re embarrassed.”  He folded his own arms to much greater effect than she had – more practice at home paying off.  “Now do we understand each other or do I start putting in the paperwork for the government to buy this little patch of dirt from you so you can move?”

Her eyes widened.  “You’d…”

“In a heartbeat – I need them out here, you I can take or leave, kapish?  So drive into town, apologize for acting like a fifteen year old with a crush and get it back to business as usual.  You can’t afford to miss stuff that goes on out here.”  Her shocked expression told him he’d won and he let himself soften a little.  “And speaking of missing stuff, I caught Harlow on the way here and sent him over to the lab to get checked out; he looked a little off to me, said he’d been feeling under the weather.”

Rosalita unstiffened at once.  “What is it, something going around?  Is he okay?”

Twitchell shrugged.  “Should be, Reed was.  It’s some sort of virus, acts like a really mild case of the flu and then turns nasty after about a week. Harlow probably doesn’t have it, but better safe than sorry.”

Now her eyes were really wide, and she came right down off the porch.  “Tyler had it too?  What do you mean, it turns nasty?”

“Goes from mild to scary, then goes back to not much at all again.  Doc said it’s cyc…cyclical, I think that was the word.”  He forced a chuckle, playing it much more casual than he really felt about it.  “Guess Reed scared them all half out of their minds Wednesday night, fell asleep on the couch watching a movie and spiked a fever of a hundred and four out of the clear blue sky.  He spent half a day being a pincushion over at the lab while Gummer tracked down the source, it was some weird mutated plant pollen.”

“A plant?  But you said it was like the flu!  And they said Mixmaster couldn’t do anything to humans!”

“It can’t,” Twitchell told her.  “But I guess what they didn’t count on was Mixmaster mutating something that could.  Old Poffenberger is up at the lab now with the specimens Gummer got before he burned out the patch, him and the doc are trying to figure out what else they might need to watch for.  Next time it could be something nasty.”

“You said _this_ time it was nasty!”  Rosalita made a frustrated noise and brushed past him, flouncing off toward the rebuilt shed where her car was kept.  “Never mind…secret agent doubletalk…I’ll go find out what’s going on for myself!”

Twitchell got back in his car and waited until she’d backed out and gunned it down the dirt road, then followed her dust trail more slowly back into town, chuckling to himself all the way.  That had gone pretty well.

 

Rosalita pulled up in front of the lab in a cloud of dust.  The ranch’s old truck was there already, and Harlow was leaning against it, talking to Tyler Reed.  Both men looked at her in surprise when she jumped out of the car and ran up to them.  “Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah.”  Harlow shrugged.  “Seasonal allergies.  That’s what I thought it was, but I agree with ol’ Twitch that you can’t be too careful – especially after what happened to Pollen Boy here.”

“That’s right, rub it in,” Tyler told him, rolling his eyes.  “We’ll see what happens to you when the ragweed starts to mutate – you’ll probably turn purple and grow a tail.”  He punched Harlow lightly on the arm, nodded at Rosalita and then started moving toward his own vehicle.  “Well, I’d better be gettin’ back.  See you guys around.”

“Wait!”  Tyler turned halfway around, looking at her warily.  He might be all right now, but he looked tired and there were the remnants of circles under his blue eyes.  Rosalita talked fast.  “Tyler, I’m…I’m sorry, okay?”

He shrugged.  “It’s Larry you owe an apology to.  You didn’t say a damn thing to me, or Burt.”

“I’ll make it up to Larry,” she promised.  “But…I know you know…what I said.  Twitchell is right, we all need each other out here to survive.”

A half smile.  “Apology accepted – part of it was my fault, anyway.”  He shook a finger at her.  “You just be sure you make it up to Larry, though, he didn’t deserve to get that dumped on him.  Next time you have a problem with me, you bring it to _me_ , got it?”

“Got it.”  Harlow wasn’t quite hiding his grin, and she rounded on him.  “What?”

Her ranch hand shrugged, obviously amused.  “Does this mean I can bring my boyfriend out to the ranch?”  She glared at him and he chuckled.  “I’ll take that as a ‘no’.”

“You and I will talk later.”  Rosalita wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not, it was hard to tell with Harlow.  “So we’re okay now?” she asked Tyler.

“You’re okay with me, as soon as you clear things up with Larry,” he told her.  “I can’t answer for Burt, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”  He turned his head suddenly, squinting across the heat-baked landscape.  Rosalita didn’t see anything and from the puzzled look on Harlow’s face he didn’t either, but Tyler broke into a grin.  “Here he comes now, as a matter of fact.  No time like the present, huh?”

Rosalita squinted herself, but Burt’s vehicle didn’t become visible for at least a minute more.  She started to say something, but Harlow caught her arm and shook his head.  Now apparently wasn’t the time; she’d ask him about it later.  “No time like the present,” she echoed doubtfully.

Burt pulled his own vehicle up beside Tyler’s truck and got out almost before the tires had stopped spinning.  With his dark glasses, fatigue pants and the dust billowing around him he looked more like the heroic figure of legend the comic books painted him as than anyone had a right to.  Tyler essayed a tight grin at him and jerked a thumb at Rosalita.  “Hey Burt.  Look who came out to check on everyone.”

“So I see.”  The older man walked right up beside his lover and nodded to Harlow, who nodded back.  “Rosalita.”

His voice was so icy she shivered.  “I heard…Twitchell told me what happened.”  Oh how she wished he didn’t have those damned glasses on so she could see his eyes!  “I…I’m sorry, Burt.”

The survivalist didn’t unbend.  “So we’re allowed to ‘trespass’ on your property again when we do our patrols?”

Rosalita bit her lip.  “Of course you are.  I was just…that was stupid of me, to say what I did.”

“Yes, yes it was,” Burt agreed with her gravely.  He took off his glasses and used them to point at her; the eyes behind them were tired as Tyler’s but even still hard and unreadable.  “We’re not playing games out here, Rosalita.  This isn’t the city.  All of us have to depend on each other to survive, regardless of what our personal feelings might be sometimes.  Do you understand me?  This _cannot_ happen again.”

“I understand.”  If he’d said that two days ago she would have snapped back at him – or at least stored the snap up to vent later when he wasn’t around – but not today.  _Next time it could be something nasty_ , Twitchell had said.  Today could have been that next time, if Harlow’s allergies had been triggered by something contaminated with Mixmaster.  “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

Burt nodded sharply.  “Enough said, then.”  He turned to Tyler and raised an eyebrow.  “Casey cleared you?”

“Yep, and Cletus too.”  Tyler grinned at him.  “Don’t we have some more ground to cover?”

The sunglasses went back on.  “You’ve got a filter mask?”

Tyler was already making tracks for his tour vehicle.  “Got one for each of us.  I’ll follow you back to town, we’ll take your truck.  Keep your eyes peeled for any plants that look weird,” he called back over his shoulder at Harlow.  “Remember, purple and a tail!”

“There can be uses for a tail!” Harlow shot back.

Tyler made a rude gesture and Burt rolled his eyes – in Tyler’s direction, Rosalita couldn’t help but notice.  And was Tyler _blushing_?  Instead of thinking about it she rounded on her ranch hand as the two vehicles drove away.  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Right as rain,” he assured her.  He raised an eyebrow.  “You?”

“I owe Nancy and Jodi an apology,” she answered, watching the dust from the two trucks billow away over the desert floor, dissipating into a haze that softened the harsh landscape.  “And then there’s Larry…”

“You need to take care of Larry first,” Harlow said.  He shrugged when she looked at him in surprise.  “Tyler seemed to think it was important.”

“It is, I just don’t know _why_.”  Rosalita bit her lip.  “Guess I’d better find out, huh?”

Harlow nodded.  “Yep,” was all he said.


End file.
